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First Doom 4 Production Shots Revealed

An anonymous reader writes "Actor Brad Hawkins has been tapped to do motion-capture work for Doom 4, and revealed that the game features the military and civilians fighting side by side. Does this mean the game is set on Earth for sure? GGL Wire has an interview with Hawkins and a selection of production shots. '[Filmmaker Mark Bristol] was very specific on the civilians having a certain personality and the military characters having a separate one as well. The body language of the civilians is less, well, "trained." They carry their guns in a looser fashion and are a little sloppier when they run, a little more freestyle. The military characters are sharp as razors, with very swift moves, exact hand positioning and can turn on a dime.'" This follows news from last month that British novelist Graham Joyce was brought in to develop the story for the game.

25 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Duct tape? by the_raptor · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will the Marines in this game remember about duct tape?

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    CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
    1. Re:Duct tape? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, but 3000 civilians will.

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  2. Re:...and? by Secret+Rabbit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're assuming that they are in it to make games. Are you sure that's a good assumption? Because, from where I sit, they seem to be more in the business of making game engines and licensing them, using DOOM to show it off rather than anything else.

  3. Wow by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not only slashdot'ted, but super-slashdot'ted. I can't even get a byte back from them. And coral cache has similar problems.

    Hint, in case this hasn't already occurred to people: DO NOT LINK TO A WEBSITE THAT CAN'T HANDLE TRAFFIC. Seriously, I don't think a single poster here has managed to actually see the screenshots at all.

    This is the problem with heavily-dynamic websites - a few visitors and you need to add extra servers. At least with static content, you can serve up to the capacity of your internet connection.

    1. Re:Wow by metus · · Score: 4, Informative

      if you use the goolge cache text-only version:
      http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Unj2yZYm0pUJ:wire.ggl.com/2009/02/09/the-doom-4-mo-cap-interview-first-production-shots-revealed/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1

      you can see the shots are flickr links. they seem to be motion capture work. no in-game shots.

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      m00
  4. Can't see the article by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd like to read this article, but I'm reluctant to put down my gun to pick up my flashlight.

  5. Re:...and? by Makarakalax · · Score: 5, Funny

    lalala I have a stereotypical opinion and I'm angry about it.

  6. Re:...and? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let's do the next version of our old game, and not risk anything really new. We'll advertise via pretty graphics, not with interesting game"

    RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

  7. Pleb ;) by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bah, only a pleb would think that black is black and can't be improved any more ;)

    Sure it'll be black, but will it be HD-rendered, bump-mapped, paralax-mapped, pixel-shaded, floating-point-colour black? I mean, just #000000 is soo last century. Nowadays only plebs and nostalgiacs would even look at that. Nowadays we want high-res high-polycount shiny objects with normals and displacements precisely calculated to accurately reflect and refract the surrounding, umm, black. We want black reflected on photo-realistic shimmering black water.

    And pay attention to the high resolution part. Just filling a 256x256 texture with (0, 0, 0) doesn't cut it any more. If it's not at least 4096x4096 worth of pure black, you might as well make it text mode.

    And will it have realistic depth-of-field effects? It's not a modern game if you can actually see clearly at more that 10 ft. You know it's really modern if you feel like a myopic guy who lost his glasses. In fact, like a myopic guy who just got beladonna drops in the eyes at the occulist, lost his glasses, and is returning home through a severe fog. If you wonder if your CRT suddenly lost the focusing coil, or if your 1600x1200 TFT is actually badly upscaling a 320x240 image, _that's_ a modern game. I mean, bah, black. What we need these days is _blurry_ black.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:Pleb ;) by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Black is sometimes very useful. You can spare a lot of work in places where you don't need any detail and safe a lot of valueable time which you could invest into other places. But only dark levels... of course this truly sucks.

      Well, I was actually just aiming for "Funny", but I'm probably not that funny if I end up having to explain it.

      Of course I'm not proposing to elaborately paint the parts of the texture which aren't even used, or which don't need any detail.

      I _do_ find it kinda weird though that so many games, especially on the PC, seem to be (A) stuck with some black-and-brown palette from the 90's, and (B) have to make everything dark. It's like a quest for some devs to use all those amazing graphics possibilities juts to make more "realistic" black-on-black images.

      I bought my first console very late. It was a Dreamcast. Let me tell you it was a shock to see the lush and bright scenery in those games, after coming from the everything-is-an-unlit-sewer games I had been playing on the PC. Mind you, a lot of PC games have discovered colours too in the meantime, but we're talking about ID and the successor of Doom 3 here. I can't resist taking a jab at whichever genius thought it's a great idea to make a game where half the time you can't see a fucking thing at all, because you can't use a flashlight and fight at the same time.

      And the second jab was at the accursed depth-of-field effect. My first contact with it was when I applied one patch in COH and suddenly everything past 100 ft or so was blurry. As if my character had severe myopia, and couldn't _possibly_ focus on anything at a distance.

      In the meantime the annoyance seems to have just spread. E.g., I've installed "Hellgate: London" a Vista computer at one point and turned all the graphics options to the max. (Hey, it's a GTX285. It can take it.) It actually made me squint. There was a road sign some 50 ft or so away, and I still remember that it was so blurry, it was practically smeared into the surrounding pixels. (The effect only seems to exist with DirectX 10, btw.)

      I find it pretty damned sad. Here we have more than a decade of GPUs and increasingly sophisticated mapping and filtering possibilities, billions sunk into R&D both on the software and hardware size, etc... and they're used top make the game as blurry and smeared as something rendered in 320x240 on an old VGA card and upscaled badly on a 10 year old TFT.

      --
      A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    2. Re:Pleb ;) by rarity · · Score: 2, Funny

      But, most importantly, will it have black controls labelled in black on a black background, with small black lights that light up black when you press them to let you know you've done it?

  8. Re:...and? by MrHanky · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good on you to be the first to post that very common opinion that you no doubt have read here several times in the past. This will no doubt get you a well deserved +5, insightful.

  9. Re:...and? by Makarakalax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Id actually developed an awesome survival horror game that those of us who enjoy such games loved. But everyone else in the world expected a shotgun gorefest and thus described it as boring, or whatever.

    And the expectations were thus because they called it Doom.

    I'm not sure why they did that. Possibly because Carmack is not a marketing guy. Possibly because Doom 3 was inevitably going to sell buckets whatever the content.

    Saying they have dropped out is nonsense, you've just attached yourself to the 13 year old fanboi meme. Doom 3 was actually a very well executed game with good level design and well written game progression. It just wasn't what people expected.

    However having said that, I'm not sure I care anymore either. FPS games bore me nowadays, and Id seemingly can only make those.

  10. Re:What about Rage? It's NEW you idiot. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Cut the crap dude. I won't bother talking about Doom with people like you. But id Software is indeed doing completely new stuff. Name's Rage. Now shut up.

    ^^^ Nerdrage

  11. Re:The rape of the series continues... by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Funny

    You should try turning down the brightness on your monitor. That should make Serious Sam into the "Doom" you want.

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  12. Re:...and? by rich_r · · Score: 2, Informative

    Quite frankly, I couldn't care less.

    There, fixed that for you.

  13. Re:...and? by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    DOOM was great, DOOM II real fun. DOOM III was boring (yes, boring!)... these days, it's just like any other large software company: "Let's do the next version of our old game, and not risk anything really new."

    So first you say Doom 3 was boring (I guess because it wasn't the action-packed game that you were expecting and because of the different atmosphere to the previous Dooms) and then you blast ID for not risking anything really new?

    I think you are either contradicting yourself or that you don't know what you're talking about. Doom 3 went in a very different direction than the previous Dooms and I guess that just because they were trying to make something new, disappointed alot of people and were not very well received.

    Personally, I thought Doom 3 was great.

  14. A derivative survival horror game by the_raptor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like survival horror, but DooM was a derivative shockfest, it is what your typical big budget horror movie is to real horror movies. DooM III tried to be System Shock and failed (even copying the audio diary story telling format).

    Hint: When something jumps out of every corner it ceases to be a surprise. I "won" DooM III when I realised the level designers would put the monster door right in the spot an FPS player would put their back to instinctively. After that point I would know roughly where the monsters were going to be.

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    CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
    1. Re:A derivative survival horror game by Makarakalax · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree there were too many shocks. I wonder if they decided to do that because they could take advantage of the true darkness that Doom3 engine allowed?

      However, some were good. My favourite shock scare was when I approached some stairs, I could only see the stairs because of some glare off them from another light source. Suddenly a light under the stairs turned on and through the gaps in the stairs I could see the silhouette of an imp staring back at me, maybe half a meter from my face. And of course the music went "BLAAAH!".

      Scared the crap out of me, and I thought it was a clever scare.

      However I would also hate the game if it was just shock-scares. That's lame. I hate horror films that focus on that. So I have to say IMO, there was a lot more to be scared of.

      After a few levels the game got very eerie. Distance whimpering just on the edge of hearing. Strange noises, things moving on the edge of your view. The gradually deteriorating sanity in the audio logs you were finding and listening to.

      The level in hell was incredible, as you followed the terrifying ordeal of one of the scientists that was abandoned there as he was hunted and toyed with by the demons.

      When you finally reached Delta labs, that level was seriously unnerving.

      I wonder if people who call it just "shocks" played the whole thing at all. And if they did, maybe I'm just weird in that I found so much more scary than just the shocks.

  15. Re:The rape of the series continues... by Fallingcow · · Score: 2, Insightful

    BINGO. Serious Sam and Painkiller are the real successors to Doom I/II. Doom III was horrible in every way; it failed at emulating the successful formula of the first two games, AND it failed at blending in elements from other game formulas (the attempt at a story, the apparent attempt at a more atmospheric and realistic feel and horror type, etc.)

    One or two enemies per room, "hiding" behind a pillar (IN EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN ROOM) does not frighten me, nor does it keep with the frantic style of the first two games. Inexplicable monster closets are out of place in a game that makes any attempt at all at being something other than a silly action game. Being able to see my enemy or shoot at it, but not both at the same time is the sort of game mechanic that is only barely tolerable even in 3rd person survival-horror games in the mold of Alone in the Dark or Haunting Ground or something like that. I guess they realized that the single-zombie-or-imp-in-the-same-"hiding"-spot-in-every-room thing was too dull, and threw that crap in to "liven it up" or something--I mean, that's gotta be it, right?

    I'd have been happy with a real Doom I/II-style game for Doom III, or with a more updated game that turned it in to a nerve-wracking survival-horror experience. They gave us neither of those things.

    That said, two parts I enjoyed:

    1. The opening cut-scene, up to about 15-20 minutes after the big event. During this part, my best guess was that I was going to be playing something like System Shock 2 minus the RPG elements crossed with the atmosphere and run-and-gun style of Alien vs. Predator, which was damn fine by me.

    2. The last 1/4 or so of the game. Everything from Hell on felt much more like Doom how I remember it. If the whole game had been like that, I'd have been satisfied with it.

  16. They failed pretty badly there by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The entire list of iDTech 4 games from Wikipedia:

    Doom 3 - id Software
    Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil - Nerve Software
    Quake 4 - Raven Software
    Prey - Human Head Studios
    Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Splash Damage
    Wolfenstein - Raven Software

    A total of six titles, one of which is an expansion pack for their game. Now how about their main competitor, the Unreal Engine, specifically version 3 since that's the newest. Well I'm not going to copy and paste the list... Because it's huge. There's more than 50 games on it. You can see it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games if you are interested. Also interesting to note is UE3 came out after iDTech 4.

    Maybe their strategy is to just sell engines, but they don't seem to be doing well in that regard. Not nearly as well as they've done in the past at least. Also, in the past, they certainly seemed interested in selling their games. While they sold plenty of engine licenses for their older games, they also sold plenty of copies of those games, and there were tons of mods of said games released.

    Personally, I was real underwhelmed with Doom 3 both as a game, and the engine backing it up. When it came out I really didn't feel it looked better than UT2004 (Unreal Engine 2). It had some neat effects, but over all I wasn't impressed with the appearance. Textures were rather low rez with no detail textures to deal with close up viewing, lighting was crap, the hard shadows made it only really good for dark, spooky games, and so on. When UE3 came out, it was just over.

    Market seems to agree with me, as there have been tons and tons of UE licenses sold and very few iDTech 4 ones.

  17. A lymeric. by Desiderius · · Score: 3, Funny

    The unlucky marine from Doom 3 - when it was once again too dark to see - said "It just isn't right - that the shotgun and flashlight - are each bound to a separate key."

  18. Not FSAA by Moraelin · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not the FSAA I'm talking about. I understand your point about FSAA, but now think the same on steroids, squared and applied generously to boot.

    In COH it's called explicitly "depth of field effects" in the options, and really it makes distand objects look as if you're drunk. Not just "less clear", but as in actually like you're seeing unfocused and seeing a little bit double. I _can_ tell a difference between that one and the option called FSAA :P

    And in HGL IIRC it's called something like "DirectX 10 smoke". Again, very different option from FSAA. The FSAA one is a dropdown, the blurr-everything one is a checbox.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  19. Re:The rape of the series continues... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Funny

    One or two enemies per room, "hiding" behind a pillar (IN EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN ROOM) does not frighten me

    Speak for yourself. To this day I cannot open a janitorial closet without a shotgun at the ready, and even then my heart races and my brow sweats.

    And every time the lights flicker, I have to check every room of the house to make sure no demons spawned or I can't go to sleep.

    Once I opened a janitor's closet and there was actually a janitor in it; I was so shocked I almost became a murderer. Fortunately he was really a demon so it was okay.

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    The enemies of Democracy are
  20. And re-veiled just as quickly by Trogre · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Interview removed by request of id Software."

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife